Lack of exposed ice inside lunar south pole Shackleton Crater.
The inside of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole is permanently shadowed; it has been inferred to hold water-ice deposits. The Terrain Camera (TC), a 10-meter-resolution stereo camera onboard the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) spacecraft, succeeded in imaging the inside of the crater, which was faintly lit by sunlight scattered from the upper inner wall near the rim. The estimated temperature of the crater floor, based on the crater shape model derived from the TC data, is less than approximately 90 kelvin, cold enough to hold water-ice. However, at the TC's spatial resolution, the derived albedo indicates that exposed relatively pure water-ice deposits are not on the crater floor. Water-ice may be disseminated and mixed with soil over a small percentage of the area or may not exist at all.
Haruyama
Junichi
J
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Kanagawa 229-85105, Japan.
Ohtake
Makiko
M
Matsunaga
Tsuneo
T
Morota
Tomokatsu
T
Honda
Chikatoshi
C
Yokota
Yasuhiro
Y
Pieters
Carle M
CM
Hara
Seiichi
S
Hioki
Kazuyuki
K
Saiki
Kazuto
K
Miyamoto
Hideaki
H
Iwasaki
Akira
A
Abe
Masanao
M
Ogawa
Yoshiko
Y
Takeda
Hiroshi
H
Shirao
Motomaro
M
Yamaji
Atsushi
A
Josset
Jean-Luc
JL
D003080:Cold Temperature; D005118:Extraterrestrial Environment; D007053:Ice; D016081:Moon; D018531:Spacecraft
D007053:Ice